Armory - Discussion Thread

[Ente]

Hmm, getting a linux-bash-newbie to use VI, and successfully so - respect to both of you! :-)
I use "nano" in the shell and like it more. Yes, less powerfull,but I don't want to reprogram my stuff, just edit a few lines ;-)

Another option to the initial problem would be to drop the big Armory folder anywhere else, and create a link to the place where Armory expects the folder. As easy as "ln -s hdd-folder ssd-folder". Or with drag-and-drop and using "copy link" in the popup.

And yes, I feel your pain, only a system-ssd here too (everything else on a server). Hope there'll be some remedy in Armory before my space runs out..

Ente

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[Carlton Banks]

Hmm, getting a linux-bash-newbie to use VI, and successfully so - respect to both of you! :-)
I use "nano" in the shell and like it more. Yes, less powerfull,but I don't want to reprogram my stuff, just edit a few lines ;-)

I know, I kind of regretted it slightly when the problems arose, but it will help us all in the end to have more capable Linux users out there. Like I said, vi's always there as long as the OS installation can still be worked with, it's part of GNU. nano's great to use, but it's not on every distribution, you can't rely on nano being available everywhere/always. I don't use vi for it's power, just as a fail-safe.

Another option to the initial problem would be to drop the big Armory folder anywhere else, and create a link to the place where Armory expects the folder. As easy as "ln -s hdd-folder ssd-folder". Or with drag-and-drop and using "copy link" in the popup.

This is symlinks, right? I've meant to learn about those for some time, good to know the syntax is straightforward.

And yes, I feel your pain, only a system-ssd here too (everything else on a server). Hope there'll be some remedy in Armory before my space runs out..

They will release 0.94 one day, lol. ~120 MB is all the space that version uses for a standard install.

[Ente]

Yes, true, VI is running on any sysrtem remotely tasting like linux.
And I have to install nano first, from time to time.
Ah well, I think I got thrown at VI too early, it wouldn't be a problem now if I had a second look?

Oh, yes, good things in the Armory pipeline. New wallet format, litenodes with very little space, and much more for later on.
I do appreciate they do a rock solid job and take their time for that, but boy, have I grown impatient since playing in the Bitcoin world! :-)

Also, I forgot to mention, why on earth would someone put the watch-only wallet on a linux and the wallet holding the keys on a windows machine? No, really, if it's for more than you would put in your physical wallet, think about it a little more :-)

Ente

[visdude]

Though I think I kinda got the gist of your insinuation, I failed to see your point.

Offline Armory is an air-gap system implementation. Therefore, it doesn't really matter if the platform it's running on is a Schwindow, Schmac, Schlinux or whatever.

BTW, now you tell us about your easier alternative to vi after our adventure with it. Why make a peep about it now...after the fact?

[visdude]

Edit: I did try to delete the swap file with the rm command but got denied for some reason.

Likely a permissions issue. You need the chmod command for that (there is a user on bitcointalk with the username "chmod 755", likely a tribute to how often that command will help you out of a tight corner). Possibly you would need chown too, depends on what the exact problem is.

I think I had used chmod way back when ck introduced a fix to the S3 firmware (with security holes). It was just a copy and paste job though and I didn't really understand what it did. It wouldn't hurt if you kinda explain what it does for the benefit of the "whuffos" in here like me.

As far as my current experimental Linux installation is concerned, it's running fine in spite of the swap file that's floating around somewhere in there (an assumption cuz I really have no clue) with no signs of hauntings. Besides, I'm gonna reinstall Linux anyway to allocate more SSD space for it (dual boot with existing Windows OS)...just in case I will eventually be installing more apps. I will implement the same setup on two other rigs (online Armory are running parallel on three Windows machines...for convenience).

I have had offline Armory runnng parallel on two portable Windows devices. I turned one of them into a Linux machine and successfully installed Armory Offline Bundle in it. However, its link/shortcut doesn't display the usual Armory icon (just a blank placehodler) though it is functional. Any ideas?

[Carlton Banks]

Though I think I kinda got the gist of your insinuation, I failed to see your point.

Offline Armory is an air-gap system implementation. Therefore, it doesn't really matter if the platform it's running on is a Schwindow, Schmac, Schlinux or whatever.

BTW, now you tell us about your easier alternative to vi after our adventure with it. Why make a peep about it now...after the fact?

He was arguably correct IMO. If I'd asked you to use the nano command instead of vi, it would've been quicker and easier. It was half linux purism on my part, but also I replied quickly from the top of my head, so I just typed out quickly what I thought of first!

Anyway, it was possible that you might not even have nano, and ALL linux has vi. So, like I said, it's arguable, one way, the other, and several other directions also...

Edit: I did try to delete the swap file with the rm command but got denied for some reason.

Likely a permissions issue. You need the chmod command for that (there is a user on bitcointalk with the username "chmod 755", likely a tribute to how often that command will help you out of a tight corner). Possibly you would need chown too, depends on what the exact problem is.

I think I had used chmod way back when ck introduced a fix to the S3 firmware (with security holes). It was just a copy and paste job though and I didn't really understand what it did. It wouldn't hurt if you kinda explain what it does for the benefit of the "whuffos" in here like me.

best place for that is the "man" page. Linux command: man chmod


I'll say what that page doesn't tell you though.

Every file and folder on Linux has Access Permissions defined for it. There are three access levels: the user level, the group level, and the others level. If you're not the user, or if your user is not in the group, or if you've not got net access to the machine containing the file/folder in question (that which defines the "others" level), then, then you cannot access that file/folder. For each level, there are 3 different types of permission; read permission, write permission and execute permission (either allowed or disallowed for each of these).

If you look through your main hard drive using a GUI file explorer, and you've got columns like "group" and "permissions" visible, you'll get a visual demonstration of the groups and users aspect; any file that's not got your username listed for either "user" or "group" will not necessarily respond to opening, saving or running (if it can be run like a program/script).


The point of all this is security. The groups and the users are assigned to the files and folders in a carefully stuctured way. This is intended to protect the most important system files and folders from access, not just from the actual legitimate users (although it feels like that's what's happening when you're noobing around...), but from hackers and malware. Or even just stopping badly written software or hardware from trying to alter something vital to the system when it shouldn't. And of course, this all means you can (and often should) set the permissions of your personal files yourself to achieve the same thing.

The "root" account is the user's way of circumventing the permissions system safely (supposedly...). The root account has access to anything and everything on that machine, and because of that, you're supposed to give it a really well chosen password. Typing su (abbreviation for "super user") or sudo (the d-o part probably abbreviates "do once") will give you either continuous or one off use of the root account (respectively). Hence the root account is frequently what you end up using, in practice, to change the permissions of files or folders you need to get access to (but can't). It's usually because you're not the user or in the right group, or because the permissions for that group are set wrong.

man chmod should tell you the rest...

[Ente]

Two small notes here:

- you can easily change partition sizes, for example with gparted in linux, with no need to format or lose data or reinstall. A backup is recommended nevertheless.

- an airgapped system has, best case, only one task, running Armory in this case. Windows needs more ressources, is less stable, and has license costs. As in this case nothing else is done on the airgapped system, the usual reasons some people want to use windows instead of linux ("my favorite program xy runs only on windows") is moot. The actual task and program you use in either case, Armory, looks and behaves the same. And finally, people tend to converse to one operating system over the time. And once they saw the light with linux.. ;-)

If my former post sounded like ridiculing you, sorry, that was not my intention. I was genuinely surprised :-)

Ente

[Carlton Banks]

I have had offline Armory runnng parallel on two portable Windows devices. I turned one of them into a Linux machine and successfully installed Armory Offline Bundle in it. However, its link/shortcut doesn't display the usual Armory icon (just a blank placehodler) though it is functional. Any ideas?

An icon file might be missing, or at least that's something to check for. I think the files are somewhere in /usr/lib/armory. When I say somewhere, I don't know exactly where, but they're all in the same appropriately labeled place.

[Moria843]

Been using this older version that was running fine in Win10 until I had a quick power blip. Ever since then get the following error.



Tried recovering blockchain and armory files from a backup from last week, didn't help. Also verified that Bitcoin-QT works fine.

As shown above, synchronizing and build databases finishes fine. Always bombs out at 99% point of scanning transaction history above.

Any suggestions?

[goatpig]

0.91??? Upgrade please.

[Moria843]

I'm in the process of installing 0.93.2 and seems to be going well. Installed all in a separate folder and pointed to it's folder and bitcoin folder using
(K:\Coindata\armory_0932\Armory\ArmoryQt.exe --satoshi-datadir=K:\coindata\bitcoin --datadir=K:\Coindata\armory_0932\Armory\data) and it created it's databases and I imported my watching wallets. Now it's going through scanning for transactions which is taking a while. I assume because it's the first time.

I looked at support files but didn't see anything about deleting old version prior to installing new.

Now I'm wondering, could I have just installed in old version folder and let it use the old databases and info already there?

Do I need to install new version on my cold computer to sign transactions or can I still use old version to sign and new version to broadcast?

Thanks.

[btc123]

I'm running Linux but not Ubuntu.  I've been converting .deb packages to .txz for Slackware but I'd prefer to compile from source and I don't see source downloads listed anywhere on the website.

[Polyatomic]

Uhm https://github.com/etotheipi/BitcoinArmory

[btcsql]

FYI it seems Armory users are going to begin to experience a lot of problems as the Armory client hasn't been updated to accomodate BIP 62:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3qo9zw/urgent_problem_with_armory_offline_transaction/

[cypherdoc]

FYI it seems Armory users are going to begin to experience a lot of problems as the Armory client hasn't been updated to accomodate BIP 62:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3qo9zw/urgent_problem_with_armory_offline_transaction/

it is now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1229596.0

[Moria843]

I upgraded to 0.93.3 on my Win 10 computer but cannot install that version on my cold storage computer (running XP), and therefore can no longer sign off-line transactions.

Is the only way to fix to go back to the older version of Armory and Bitcoin Core on my online computer or is there some other way to set something up on my XP computer (32 bit) so that I can sign offline transactions?

[goatpig]

You can offline sign with 0.92 and broadcast with 0.93.3

[Moria843]

Thanks goatpig, that worked. Saw on website that 0.93.2 also says it has a 32 bit version and will run on XP. But when I checked on secure downloader and filtered out 32 bit versions 0.93.2 didn't show up. So I installed 0.92.3 to play it safe.

[goatpig]

Thanks goatpig, that worked. Saw on website that 0.93.2 also says it has a 32 bit version and will run on XP. But when I checked on secure downloader and filtered out 32 bit versions 0.93.2 didn't show up. So I installed 0.92.3 to play it safe.

That's a mess up on our part, 0.93 only comes in x64 on Windows.

[Moria843]

This isn't Armory problem but wondering if you can help.

Have latest version or Armory and bitcoin core on 64bit Win10. Lost power to PC and now Armory stuck on "Initializing Bitcoin Engine". But when I look at task manager I see that bitcoind is not loading. I thought maybe just a few files in the bitcoin core block directory corrupt and tried deleting those but didn't help. Then restored my entire bitcoin core folder from my last backup (beginning of Dec) and get same response. Then after existing Armory tried running Bitcoin-QT and get pop up that block index is corrupt and asked if I want to reindex blocks. Doing so now and after 8 hours still over "1 year, 3 weeks behind".

Was there an easier fix I should have tried?